The world is on fire. But for an increasingly vocal segment of extremely online politicos, there is a greater geopolitical concern hanging over the election: the fear that Pete Buttigieg is secretly an asset, officer, or agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The conspiracy theory that Buttigieg is a CIA plant has been congealing in the internet’s fever swamps for as long as profiles of the young candidate have fixated on a biography that, to the conspiracy-minded, seems almost suspiciously clean—the perceived threats of neoliberal imperialists and the “deep state” converging in the unlikely form of a dweebish Midwestern mayor.
“He’s one of the many intelligence community operators working in government,” Steve Poikonen, host of the YouTube vlog series Slow News Day, said confidently in an April episode titled “Pete Buttigieg: CIA Democrat?” In a 13-minute video delineating the conspiracy theory, Poikonen breaks down what he sees as Buttigieg’s Harvard-to-Oxford educational pipeline, his service as a Navy Intelligence officer in Afghanistan after a stint at McKinsey & Co., his fellowship at the Truman National Security Project, and the more than 200 national security and intelligence figures who have endorsed his candidacy, including the former head of the National Clandestine Service and the agency’s former deputy director.
These, Poikonen told The Daily Beast, all amount to evidence that he’s a perfect tool of the intelligence community.
“Put together, a picture forms of an elite-educated, multi-language-speaking employee of the CIA’s consulting firm who currently serves as an intelligence officer in the naval reserves,” Poikonen told The Daily Beast. “If you created a CIA asset in a lab, you’d wind up with Pete Buttigieg.” More:
www.thedailybeast.com/far-le...a-secret-agent